That gratitude thing again

I had an amazing talk with a friend in D.C. tonight. I was feeling blue all day, bruised (a bit) by reentering the dating fray, and even a beautiful run around the reservoir in Central Park couldn't cure me. Then the phone rang, and it was my friend, who had wise and comforting things to say about breakups. He reminded me that breaking up doesn't mean the love never happened, and that nobody can take that away. He said how lucky I was that I've been able to experience transcendent love several times in my life when some people never feel it once. It sounds a bit basic, but I realized that it was a nicer way of looking at the breakup--through the prism of what I gained rather than lost. (It's that gratitude thing again--it's the hot new emotion among happiness researchers.) And I gained a lot, including things that enabled me to come up with a book about sex (Behind the Bedroom Door) and spend two months working on it in Rome. The absence of it is hard, but now I will hopefully get to experience it again, for the first time, and there is nothing quite like that. I look forward to it.

Ciao!
Paola

P.S. I'm showing off by posting the picture of clouds, above, that I took in Cinque Terre--I thought it was pretty transcendent!